


The Skin Behind Our Masks

by faelan



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Freedom, Illusions, Introspection, Love, Lydia's POV, M/M, Masks, Reality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 08:57:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7568071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faelan/pseuds/faelan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most people, Lydia knows, enjoy illusions. High school is one of the most epic illusions, a drama of infinite proportions, since the beginning of humanity’s departure from the trees, from the caves. But nothing much has changed since the trees, since the caves. Toilet paper, proms, nuclear weapons are not exactly an evolution of the species; it’s more of an expansion of human fears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Skin Behind Our Masks

Contrary to the average person’s belief, most people dislike thinking. Thought itself can be the sharpest weapon, used against others or oneself. And Lydia does enjoy thinking. At some point or another, thought became a refuge and the pain turned into a controversial pleasure. Thought implies complicity. Complicity implies responsibility. Responsibility implies the thing most people are terrified of; freedom. 

Most people, Lydia knows, enjoy illusions. High school is one of the most epic illusions, a drama of infinite proportions, since the beginning of humanity’s departure from the trees, from the caves. But nothing much has changed since the trees, since the caves. Toilet paper, proms, nuclear weapons are not exactly an evolution of the species; it’s more of an expansion of human fears. 

So Lydia doesn’t particularly enjoy illusions, but they too are reality. Each and every illusion, personal or collective, shapes personal or collective reality. And so it’s up to Lydia to participate in the drama of high school, in the illusions around her… How else do you survive? 

People enjoy illusions thinking reality would prove to be too much of a burden. So the high school jock, hides his father’s alcoholism with lacrosse bruises until the two aches merge and he doesn’t have to focus on which one is real or which one is chosen. And the crowd is always there, cheering and clapping, and for a while, a few moments the jock can feel powerful even in the oceans of his powerlessness. In the crowd, surrounded by it, he can forget, for a bit longer that there is no such thing as absolute control. Not when you’re a teenager and not when you’re an adult. It’s an illusion, one of countless, people including his father, buy into and are sold on even when they drown daily. 

“That’s a great shade of lipstick, Lydia,” a freshman blurts out awkwardly as she hurries past Lydia.  
It’s not the lipstick, though, is it? Things are much like thoughts only coarser and far more visible. Things, even a lipstick, can be a simple and effective weapon, a wall, a statement. And Lydia has no issues with people being terrified by her. She marks her territory well, and it’s not only werewolves that can piss on a location. Lydia owns most of the high school. And it’s not the lipsticks, and it’s not the shoes, and it’s not clothes, and it’s not the hair, and it’s not the money, and it’s not the jock. Those are secondary. Those are accessories. Those are props for the drama, for the play. Shiny keeps the illusion from being too bleak. 

“Detach yourself from my locker, Stilinski,” she waits for the flail, hiding a smirk, and puts her books back into the locker. 

Some are curious little actors in the grand drama. Some, rare but few, seem to think they can be… Just be, without an act. Perhaps it’s possible, but for how long?

It’s not even the illusion that is all that important. It’s what’s behind it. After all, each play has very willing actors. Lydia should know, after all, she plays her role to perfection. 

And it’s not as if the role is mandatory, and it’s not as if everyone hates the games. Perhaps out of boredom, and not only fear, the drama is the only way to exist while not living. It’s the drama of shallow suffering that is alluring, instead of the possibilities of transformation and transcending.  
What would the unpopular kids have to tell to their future kids about their lives if not the drama of their own choice, and what would the popular kids have to lean onto once the glamour faded with age and exposure to the plays outside the high school one? Everyone needs their victimhood, wants it fleshed out and boned in. 

Everyone craves the pain in order to find pleasure just before and after self-inflicting it. 

And Lydia likes to think beyond the pain and the pleasure, beyond the illusion, beyond the walls, and courts, and games, and divisions, and the glamour. There’s a bigger game around the little ones. Something deeper, and something eternal. Something beyond humanity. It’s subtle and it’s crude. It’s in the air, but not of it. Perhaps it’s the one game nobody wants to be a part of. Perhaps it’s a bigger illusion than any human created one. It’s in the tiny prints, the quiet storms, and the silence above the fury of an idiot. 

When Lydia was a child, her father took her to church. She wore her best white dress, and her best white shoes, and it was important to be on her best behavior. Strangely enough, the church didn’t leave the best impression on her. There was a half-naked man with effeminate looks crucified onto a piece of wood, looking down on the people with their best clothes, best shoes, and best behaviors for the next hour or two, and all Lydia could think; maybe it’s not the best behavior to enjoy such a guilt and suffering infused symbol. It’s only later that she learns about the resurrection, the one part nobody is as enamored as they are with their supposed savior dangling in the air. Perhaps it’s a message; look, nobody was worth saving in the first place. Nobody wants to be saved. That would be boring. 

So Lydia knows. She puts on her best dress, she puts on her best shoes, and she puts on her best mask, and rules the pious high school herd in their mass offerings of their envy, jealousy, worship, confusion, fear, illusions. Every sheep has to be sheared. Otherwise they’d just get tangled in their own curls and swirls and panicky running into fences and tearing the wool along with their skin. Because at the end of the day, every jock needs his dose of temporary power before going back to the reality, and every nerd needs his dose of temporary powerlessness to keep him motivated to ensure getting out of his reality. Every ugliness needs its beauty, and every beauty needs its ugliness. How else do you know which is which? How else can you appreciate them both? 

“Stilinski, I’ll shove the lacrosse stick up your ass if you don’t move out of my way,” Jackson yells out.  
“Swerve, lizard turd, swerve!” Stiles cackles, “Leave my ass alone, go play with yours. Ow! Why you piece of aborted crocodile fetus…” 

It’s interesting how sooner or later; no matter how well you’ve created your illusion, your world; the scales underneath have to surface. And the screams must be let loose unless they get swallowed back into the matrix. There are no lizards and no wailing women crucified in churches. No mass, no prayer, no guilt. 

“Who did it?” Derek rolls his eyes at Stiles’ proud grin over the blooming bruise on his face. 

It’s not that Lydia is religious, but she does have a herd. She does have her pond with a school of fish willing to be baited and caught. She does have a mass. She does have a scream of a prayer for life in spite of the death. It’s a game within a game. These days, she seems to have gotten a pack of sorts…  
Stiles wiggles in his plaid amused by god only knows what, touching the bruise with light brushes of his buzzed fingertips as Derek goes for an antiseptic and some gauze. The loft is not as warm as the outside, so Lydia moves to sit on the couch next to Jackson and his semi-guilty vibes. 

“How long does it take McCall to get his ass up here and dislocate his freaky jaw from his girlfriend’s freaky jaw? Some of us have a life.” 

Roles are useful to a point. Each part is but a part of an ever changing whole, and the wholeness is the one directing the show no matter how many parts an individual takes and changes into. One spirals, twirls, dances in their role until it unrolls from the use or disuse. It unrolls unto another role, whether temporary or permanent, until the wholeness is experienced or rejected. And if rejected, there’s a void behind all those roles; a nothingness, an emptiness. But it’s not the hole which is empty, it’s the individual unwrapped which was always and forever a vast eternity. And if the vast eternity is the sole creator from which everything comes, then it’s the individual which creates and always had his or hers illusion. 

“Calm your schnitzel, Jackson.” Peter smirks, “I didn’t bite McCall for his punctuality.” 

“Would you stop touching your bruise?” Stiles snorts as if Derek’s annoyance is encouragement to irritate him some more.

“I am not dying. Lydia would have screamed in warning by now.”

“Would not.” 

“You love me.” 

And Lydia thinks, maybe she does.


End file.
